Vision, Mission + Values

VIVO Media Arts Centre is located on the unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. Incorporated as Satellite Video Exchange Society, VIVO is a steward of critical history and an agent for emergent experimental media arts practices. Our programs foster formal and critical approaches to media arts, and reflect the diversity of contemporary technologies and communities that coalesce around new forms of knowledge and creativity. VIVO builds an engaged audience through workshops, production support, distribution, artist residencies, performances and exhibitions as well as curatorial and archival research. We are also the caretakers of a significant and substantial repository of media art history. Through these activities and our extensive archival resources, VIVO plays a unique role in facilitating and fostering artistic practices in the region.

‍VIVO’s vision is for everyone to have the means and agency to creatively question and participate in their mediated worlds.

‍VIVO’s mission to nurture past, present and future media arts discourses and communities through equitable and public access to resources for preservation, production and dissemination.

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VIVO strives to engender the following values:
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Experimental

We support non-normative, experimental, emergent, and exploratory practices that may not find space for expression in commercial or academic contexts.

Artist-run

We believe in creating space for artists and practitioners, and support artist-run values of fair compensation, self-organization, diversity and inclusion. We recognize that living up to these values requires deepening support of artists and practitioners.

Equitable stewardship

We recognize that equitable access to the materials and discourses of media arts production requires assessing and correcting biases inherent in our operations, including who gets to make decisions, occupy space or access resources.

Responsible stewardship

We believe responsible stewardship of our resources requires the regular assessment and improvement of our capacity to house and maintain our preserved media works, new and old technology, and aggregated knowledge and skills.

Responsive

We strive toward critical awareness of ourselves and our context, the changing needs of our community, the power structures that exist in our society as well as the historic and systemic barriers to access, and we respond to these accordingly through our programs and resources.

Indigenous Sovereignty

We strive to address our complicity in settler colonialism and acknowledge our responsibility to support Indigenous self-determination, and foster relationships of care with Indigenous artists, initiatives and nations.

Inclusive

We recognize the value of gathering and aim to provide space for active, non-exclusionary assembly that allows for new encounters with people and ideas.